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For Auburn, A Worse March Madness

The Auburn Tigers lost in the first round of the Southeastern Conference tournament Thursday night – a 68-54 decision at the hands of Ole Miss, good enough to send them home for the year with a 15-16 record and 10th in the league. But they had plenty more to worry about than a stalling bid for an NIT berth. Just a few hours before, Yahoo Sports released a report claiming that point guard Varez Ward, already suspended since late February, is at the center of a federal investigation involving point shaving. At least two games are being investigated by the probe: a Jan. 25 loss to Arkansas and a Feb. 7 loss to Alabama.

Associated Press

In this Feb. 4 file photo, Auburn guard Varez Ward dribbles past Mississippi State guard Brian Bryant days before life became much more complicated for members of the Auburn basketball program.

Point shaving involves intentionally affecting a game’s score, usually by failing to score as much as possible to benefit gamblers who have bet on the game. Yahoo’s report says that an Auburn player tipped off an assistant coach about a possible infraction, after which the school contacted both the NCAA and the FBI. Following that, Ware and guard Chris Denson were suspended indefinitely for violation of team rules prior to the Feb. 25 game against Arksansas, with Denson rejoining the team one game later. Ward was not reinstated through the rest of the season, which ended with last night’s loss in the SEC tournament. In a statement to the media, the school wrote, “Auburn officials were made aware of a rumor regarding an allegation two weeks ago and immediately reported it to the FBI, the NCAA and the SEC. Because of the nature of the allegation, Auburn is not in a position to make any further comment on the situation.” (An e-mail to Ward was not returned.)

It’s not immediately clear what impact Ward may have had on the games in question. As Yahoo notes, he was removed from the Jan. 25 game due to injury after playing just a few minutes, with Auburn eventually covering the spread. In the Feb. 7 game against Alabama, he was wildly ineffectual, shooting 1-for-5 from the field with six turnovers in 17 minutes in a game the Crimson Tide easily covered. Still, with the mandate of silence due to the involvement of the feds, it’s hard to know anything until the investigation concludes. “It’s a familiar spot for Auburn,” Steve Eubanks notes for Fox Sports. “During their 2010 National Championship run the FBI and NCAA questioned a lot of people about Cam Newton. Newton and the university were cleared of any wrongdoing, and fans continued to rally around their football program.” We’ll of course provide updates as the story continues.

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It’s been a long, sad existence for the Northwestern University men’s basketball team, as this Fixer/alum can personally attest, with not so much as one NCAA tournament appearance in 73 years. The Wildcats have seemed on the brink of finally crashing the party the last few years, only to squander it with poor play as the tourney drew near and a signature deflating loss to kill off any dreams of March Madness. This year was no exception: Needing a big splash in the Big Ten tournament to bolster the case for selection, Northwestern instead went down in the first round, losing 75-68 in overtime to the lower-seeded Minnesota Golden Gophers, scoring just two field goals between the last five minutes of regulation and the overtime period. With a 1-10 record against teams with top 50 RPIs and such an uninspiring first-round defeat to a team that went 6-12 in conference play, it’s safe to say that streak of selection-less tournaments isn’t about to end.

As the Wildcats likely head towards their fourth National Invitation Tournament in a row, coach Bill Carmody will have to consider why his team didn’t break through – and why they haven’t done so in his 12 years in charge. “Nobody denies how close Northwestern is to breaking through as a program, thanks largely to Carmody,” David Haugh writes for the Chicago Tribune. “Is that the best argument on his behalf or the worst?” Yahoo’s Pat Forde puts it a little more plainly, calling for more administrative urgency toward the plateau Carmody’s achievements represent. “You can feel sorry for the players, a generally articulate bunch who genuinely were hurting after this loss. It would be nice to see them make the Big Dance just once,” he writes. “But it’s hard to feel sorry for a program that continually underachieves and a fan base that only gives lip service to caring about it.” Your Fixer attempted to reach out to students for rebuttal, but they were all busy studying.

We’ve been busy studying here at the Journal, too, booking up on every possible tournament team ahead of Selection Sunday. We’ll live blog the selection show Sunday night, and once the teams are out we will release the second annual Blindfold Brackets game. This year, the winner will receive a personalized, hand-made dot drawing (known around these parts as a hedcut) like the ones that appear on the Journal’s front page each morning.

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It’s the most thrilling play in basketball: a game-winning shot by the team’s star player working by himself, rising up over his defender to ice the game with little or no time left on the clock. It’s also the most frustrating for coaches, who want their players to think about moving the ball and trusting their teammates rather than trying to cook up the proper amount of onions out of thin air. Because young NBA players would rather emulate Michael Jordan than Ben Wallace and because it’s the most visually appealing play to uninformed spectators, ESPN’s Henry Abbott argues, hero ball has endured despite being the least effective type of basketball in existence.

“Perhaps you’ve heard of hero ball. Maybe not. That would hardly be a surprise, as its practitioners like to pretend it doesn’t exist. But even though hero ball looks suspiciously like basketball — it’s played on the same court and uses the same rims, same ball and at least some of the same players — it differs from basketball in one key respect: The goal of hero ball is not necessarily to outscore your opponent,” he writes. “The goal of hero ball is, instead, appeasing egos, saving coaching jobs, kowtowing to talking heads and mollifying idiot owners sitting on the floor. If hero ball is tangentially about winning basketball games, it’s about winning them only through the least efficient, most predictable means of doing so.”

Of course, a cynic would note that of Wednesday’s four game-winning shots – made on the same day that Abbott’s article went up – the most impressive came from the type of play he analyzes as inferior: a long, isolated step-back jumper by Chicago’s Derrick Rose to beat the Milwaukee Bucks with no time left. It was more exciting than a well-run pick and roll, too. Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau’s confidence in the reigning MVP to get it done by himself would appease the article’s first commenter, who wrote, “Those are all good points and what not but in the last seconds of the game I want Kobe to have the ball in his hands.” The debate rages on.

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Manny Pacquiao is, by most reasonable accounts, one of the best pound-for-pound boxers in the world. When he’s not dancing around a potential fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr., he’s also one of the strangest thanks to his job as the host of “Manny Many Prizes,” a weekly Filipino game show in which Pacquaio prompts a number of regular citizens to compete for money, fame, and a handshake from their country’s most beloved son. For spectators used to seeing Pacquaio batter opponents with those lightning-quick fists, the sight of him shooting the breeze with a handful of former “American Idol” contestants or palming cash into an old woman’s hand may be pointedly strange, as are the countless puns used to title the show’s contests (doesn’t “Easy Manny” sound like a blast?). But after watching every episode of “Manny Many Prizes” to date, Grantland’s Rafe Bartholomew doesn’t see irreverent fun so much as a political campaign, one aimed at driving Pacquaio’s would-be attempt to become governor of his Sarangani Province in 2013, and the president of the whole country after that. Considering how much of his political power seems to be driven by his success in the boxing ring, what happens when that career slows to a stop and Pacquaio is forced to be an actual politician rather than a celebrity?

“If Pacquiao isn’t raking in a $20 to $30 million purse twice a year, where will the money to wage electoral campaigns in 2016 and 2022 come from? The traditional Filipino politician would spend the time between elections using the power of his office — often in less-than-ethical ways — to raise funds for his next campaign. Pacquiao’s boxing income has helped him maintain a clean reputation through his first two years in office, because he doesn’t need to divert government funds to side businesses or accept kickbacks from illegal lottery syndicates,” Bartholomew writes. “Beyond that, I believe the hype about Pacquiao’s desire to be an honest politician and serve his country. But there will come a time when the boxing money faucet stops pouring, and all the hundreds — if not thousands — of people who look to Manny Pacquiao for their livelihoods will pressure him to find a way to keep the train moving, to keep giving out Manny’s many prizes. Great men, compassionate men — national heroes like Manny Pacquiao — have faltered under that kind of stress.”

SPORTS, THE JOURNAL WAY

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When Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao step into the ring on May 2, they will fight at the welterweight-class limit of 147 pounds—an odd, seemingly random number that has long held a special mystique.